Pastor's Corner

17Aug

Mid-Week Challenge

Mid-Week Challenge

In you like to read the headlines you might have come across the New York Times article “Is God Transgender?” It was written by a Jewish Rabbi named Mark Sameth. In it he argues that the Bible presents God as transgender, even going so far as to suggest that the ancient Hebrews did not pronounce YHWH as Jehovah or Yahweh. He writes:

The Israelite priests would have read the letters in reverse as Hu/Hi — in other words, the hidden name of God was Hebrew for “He/She.” Counter to everything we grew up believing, the God of Israel — the God of the three monotheistic, Abrahamic religions to which fully half the people on the planet today belong — was understood by its earliest worshipers to be a dual-gendered deity.

Rabbi Sameth explains his position by pointing to the ancient world’s understanding about gender to be one of “fluidity.” In other words the ancients were more civilized if they were open minded about their culture. He goes on to cite several Biblical passages where he claims the text switches between he/she terms to describe the same person. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/13/opinion/is-god-transgender.html?_r=1

I’m sure Sameth is a very smart person, but he gives away his political leanings in the first paragraph of his article where he describes his transgendered uncle being fired after transitioning in the 1970s. It is clear that he has a political point to make as he twists Scripture passages and makes enormous leaps in his claims by giving weak examples.

It is no great discovery to learn that both men and women are made in the image of God and that God transcends gender because the Bible makes that very clear. The trouble is when we try to make God into our image by forcing a passage to mean something that it does not. Through arguments such as Sameth’s we attempt to bring God down to our level in an attempt to justify our sinful and fallen behavior. If we find a way to make God like us then we eventually don’t need Him. Maybe that has been the goal all along?

Instead of spending so much time trying to reshape God’s Word into our image maybe we should spend more time working on reshaping the flaws we find in ourselves.

I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Psalm 119:11